GOP shuns Michigan congressman after impeachment tweets
WASHINGTON – He was known in the Michigan statehouse as “Mr. No” for voting against some Republican legislation. But now in Congress, on the question of whether President Donald Trump should be impeached, Rep. Justin Amash is the lone Republican saying “Yes.”
In tweeted remarks over the weekend, Amash wrote that he’s read special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Trump’s conduct during and after the 2016 presidential election. Mueller did not find evidence of conspiracy with Russia, but he revealed startling details about Trump’s efforts to shut down the probe and made no recommendation on obstruction. Amash became the only Republican in Congress to call for the House to formally charge the president.
“Mueller’s report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment,” Amash, a longtime Trump critic, tweeted Saturday after reading the report. Specifically, Amash tweeted, the findings identify “multiple examples of conduct satisfying all the elements of obstruction of justice.”
The backlash from Republicans was swift and sharp against a congressman from a key state that Trump swiped from Democrats – by less than a percentage point – for the first time since the Reagan administration.
In his bid to keep the state in his column next year, Trump launched a weaponized tweet that could serve as a warning to other Republicans considering defying him. None immediately did so.
Within hours, Trump had called Amash “a total lightweight” and a “loser.”
“He’s been against Trump from the beginning,” Trump said. “Personally I think he’s not much.”
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy on Fox News questioned whether Amash really belongs among GOP congressmen. But most notably, the fifth-term lawmaker drew a primary challenger for his Grand Rapids-area seat in the 2020 race. The key disqualification, as Republicans described it across the board Monday, was Amash’s insufficient loyalty to the president on matters such as Trump’s wall to Mueller’s “witch hunt.”
“Amash has consistently voted against President Donald Trump on important issues,” said state Rep. Jim Lower, who scrambled to announce his campaign Monday after Amash’s tweets. In a telephone interview, Lower said, “Most Republican Party primary voters support the president and want a congressman that would work with him to get his agenda done.” He accused Amash of “standing in the way” and said the congressman has moved away from the party over several years.
Amash was elected in 2010 as part of the tea party wave that toppled Democratic control. He was one of the founding members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. He vowed to explain all his votes, and to never miss one.
But many of the Freedom Caucus members are no longer in Congress and the group is now dominated by proTrump Republicans. Amash acknowledges that he’s somewhat isolated in Washington as a result, describing himself in the “Liberal Lions” podcast in March as “not personally lonely, but politically lonely.”
Back home in Michigan, establishment Republicans in the business community have long been disenchanted with Amash, saying he does not do enough to solve problems in the district. They backed an unsuccessful primary challenger in 2014. But the dynamics have shifted with Trump’s election, and GOP operatives say the president’s criticism of Amash has hurt the congressman’s standing with the base.
“He’s the most vulnerable in a Republican primary that he’s ever been,” said Greg McNeilly, a Republican strategist in Grand Rapids. “The 3rd District, while much more of a swing district in a general election for the president, is a solidly Trumpian district in a primary. The delta between the president and congressman is the chief source of Justin Amash’s problem.”
Amash isn’t ruling out challenging Trump on the Libertarian ticket in 2020, in part because he wants to offer people an alternative to the major parties.